This is what I did today:

I spent the day learning what principle component analysis is, how to do it, and what type of analysis my data needs. Now I get to figure out what this means. I will say that the principle component scores are correlated with my physiological function of interest. The black dots are babies, red are children, and green are adult individuals of my study species.

I had to do all of this at the behest of my primary collaborator. He's in town for a couple of months (he's been in Israel for two years for his postdoc) and the first thing he did was tell me that my multiple linear regressions are all wrong because I can't assume that my variables are independent. This is his way of getting around that, I guess. Instead of plugging my lipid groups into the MLR individually, I'll use the principle component scores. This, of course, means all new statistics and all new graphs.

My latest post at #SciAmBlogs:

About

C6H12O6 is the molecular formula for glucose. Glucose is a monosaccharide that plays a major role in energy production via cell metabolism. Glucose is delicious and sweet, and you need it to surivive, but too much glucose can make you obese and give you Type II diabetes. I picked it as the namesake for my blog because metabolic rate is the cornerstone of my field, comparative physiology.

I'm Michelle, a newly minted M.Sc. from an ecophysiology lab, and a technical editor for a scientific journal publishing group. Physiologically, I have an overactive sympathetic nervous system. Personally, I am agoraphobic and kind of a nerd. In my free time I blog and drink way too much tea.